Ed Symkus reviews movies for GateHouse News Service. A longtime features writer and film critic for TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, he can often be found at film junkets talking with celebrities. Find out what they have to say here.

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Brit Marling (right) plays an FBI agent, and Ellen Page plays one of the eco-terrorists she's investigating in "The East."

June 11, 2013
1:56 p.m.

With the release of the new political thriller “The East,” Brit Marling earns herself a hat trick of a moviemaking hat trick. This is the third film (after “Another Earth” and “Sound of My Voice”) that she’s co-written, co-produced and starred in.

The 30-year-old Chicago native has also been doing a lot of acting for others, most recently opposite Robert Redford in “The Company You Keep,” and last year as the daughter of Richard Gere’s character in “Arbitrage.”

But Marling appears a bit surprised that she’s made a career out of acting and filmmaking. It seems to her that it was only yesterday when she was studying economics at Georgetown University. She spoke by phone from Dallas about “The East” and how she made it to Hollywood.Weren’t you supposed to be working on Wall Street by now?

That was supposedly the plan. I feel like life should just be called adventures in Plan B. (laughs) I studied economics in school. And during my junior summer internship, I worked at a bank as an analyst. Lots of people around me loved what they were doing. But it just didn’t move me. There was a moment there, when I was in my cubicle, crunching numbers on Excel, and I thought, "I’ve gotta get out of here, this isn’t for me."

Weren’t you already involved in making films at that point?

Yes. In my freshman year, I saw a film that was co-directed by [students] Zal Batmanglij and Mike Cahill that was stunning. So I basically stalked them on campus until they let me make movies with them. I was pitching myself as a sound girl-lighting tech, but Zal said, “Well, maybe you should be in one.” I had done plays in high school, and I liked acting, so I did it, and had a lot of fun, but I never really thought of it as a thing to do with one’s life. It wasn’t until I graduated college that I realized that the thing that you love to do is exactly what you should do with your life.

When you all went to L.A., was it difficult to break in?

We had a really hard time when we first got there. Mike and I were doing documentary work. I was getting work as a camera woman on odd projects. I was trying to audition for things, but I couldn’t figure out how to even get an audition except for parts in intense horror films. So we started making films on our own, again, very much the way we did at Georgetown, and then we realized that we had a lot to offer the system, about how to make films now, for less. So we changed our perspective a bit.

“The East” is about an FBI agent that infiltrates a group of eco-terrorists who are living off the grid. Did the movie take shape based on the time you and Zal lived on the road for a while?

At one point, four summers ago, in L.A., we had run out of money. So we decided to go have an adventure. We were reading about the freegan and anarchist movements, and we were interested in what young people in this country were feeling and thinking. So we learned to train-hop, then got some back packs and train-hopped back and forth across the states. We stayed on organic farms, and fell in with freegan groups and collectives, and learned about living off the grid. The biggest thing we learned was about living and working in tribes, and the value of a collective. That’s when we got back into the sort of more tribal filmmaking. We knew we could make collective films with the same sort of dumpster diving spirit. That’s when we made “Another Earth” and “Sound of My Voice.” It wasn’t till years later that we noticed when we talked to people about that summer, they seem very interested. What if we put them in an espionage thriller? That was the idea.

You’re a writer and actor and producer. Are there plans to start directing?

I get a lot of pleasure out of writing and acting, and I feel so challenged by the craft of acting. It never seems to get any easier to be honest and present and not close up because you have a moment of insecurity. I feel so compelled by that, and I’m in awe of people who can act and direct at the same time. So I don’t know if I can bite that off and chew it. At least not now. But maybe somewhere down the road.

“The East” opens on June 14, then expands into more theaters.Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now.